I. FINANCIALMIRROR - Cyprus police bans vuvuzela from football games
The police has issued an all-out ban on the whirring vuvuzelas at football grounds, using an old law that prohibits any object considered dangerous, after the first noisy horns appeared in Cyprus soon after the World Cup that ended in South Africa last Sunday. A police announcement said that all vuvuzelas will be confiscated in accordance with a law that aims to prevent violence on sports grounds, by banning items that could be “thrown or handled in a manner that would cause grievous bodily harm or material damage.” The law enforcement agency said the vuvuzelas appeared during the European obligations of Cyprus teams, namely Apoel that beat Tauras 3-0 in Lithuania and Anorthosis that lost 2-0 to Croatia’s Sibenik in Larnaca. Both return games will be held next Thursday and Cypriot police are expected to be on the lookout for the noisy horns.
II. EUOBSERVER - EU prepares for court opinion on Kosovo independence
The International Court of Justice in the Hague (ICJ) has officially announced that it will give its opinion on 22 July on the legality of Kosovo's declaration of independence. The opinion was requested by the UN General Assembly on the initiative of Serbia. Serbia hopes that the ICJ will say the Kosovo declaration of independence is not in accordance with International law. "This is going to be a moment of truth, a warning to Pristina that with unilateral acts they can not change international law," Serbia's foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic is quoted as saying. Serbia believes that after the ICJ opinion it can initiate a debate in the General Assembly of the United Nations in an attempt to reopen negotiations on the status of Kosovo. According to diplomats in the EU, such a move would put Serbia on a collision course with the major Western countries which have recognised Kosovo. This might have a negative impact on Serbia's aspirations to advance on its EU integration path. The debate in the ICJ about legal arguments in favour or against Kosovo independence exposed big differences between the majority of EU members which have recognised Kosovo and the five which have not. Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands and many other countries presented their written and oral arguments in favour of Kosovo independence before the judges of the ICJ. Meanwhile, Spain, Cyprus, Slovakia and Romania were in a group with Russia, China, Venezuela, Bolivia and others claiming that Kosovo's declaration of independence has no base in international law. Any fresh debate in the UN General Assembly on Kosovo independence is seen as another risk that EU countries will show disunity on an important common foreign and security policy issue. "If it [the EU] can not speak with one voice on Kosovo, which is part of Europe and where the EU is massively engaged economically, politically and with rule of law missions, then its common foreign policy in the rest of the world will be less credible," said an EU diplomat. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on 17 February 2008 and has so far been recognised by 69 countries, including the US and 22 EU member states. The ICJ's opinion is of an advisory nature and will not be legally binding for any country. The countries that have recognised Kosovo consider this to be their sovereign right and have made clear that they will not change their mind either. The European Union is preparing how to react after the ICJ opinion is issued next Thursday. It is expected that Kosovo and the ICJ opinion will be discussed at the EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday 26 July and that the EU will support renewed dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, but not any new status negotiations. Even on this point there seems to be no consensus among EU member states, however. The European Parliament in a resolution on Kosovo adopted last week asked those EU member states that have not done so to recognise Kosovo as independent country.
III. AFP - S.Korea, US to stage series of naval drills
South Korea and the United States will stage a series of naval exercises this year to deter North Korea following the sinking of one of Seoul's warships, the defence ministry said Friday. The ministry also announced that a separate anti-proliferation naval drill would be held off South Korea in October, as part of Seoul's military response. The South and its US ally, citing findings of a multinational investigation, accuse the North of torpedoing the Cheonan warship in March and killing 46 sailors. The North angrily denies involvement and says a UN Security Council statement on July 9 -- which condemned the attack without specifying the culprit -- proves its point. Seoul and Washington are going ahead with war games this month to deter Pyongyang. But the defence ministry says the venue has been switched from the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan (East Sea) following complaints from China. Some would be part of regular annual joint exercises and others were newly scheduled, he said, adding that none have so far been planned near the disputed Yellow Sea border with the North. The ministry said it would host a Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) exercise on October 13-14 off the southern port city of Busan. The United States, Australia, Japan and Singapore will also be among those taking part. The PSI, launched in 2003 by then-US President George W. Bush, aims to halt the shipping by sea or air of weapons of mass destruction. The North, which has been accused of exporting missiles and nuclear know-how as well as conventional weapons, has described the South's involvement in the drill as a declaration of war. Details of planned bilateral exercises will be announced next week when US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visit Seoul.
IV. LATIMES - UK: Release of Lockerbie bomber was a mistake
It was a mistake to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Britain's ambassador to the United States said Friday. The British government believes it was wrong to let Al Megrahi out of prison and return home to Libya in August 2009, Ambassador Nigel Sheinwald said in a statement. The government at the time also felt the same way, he said. The decision to release Al Megrahi, however, was up to the devolved Scottish executive and the British government therefore had no power to stop it, Sheinwald said.
An international human rights group said Friday that Syria's president has done "virtually nothing" to improve human rights and expand freedoms during his decade in power. New York-based Human Rights Watch said President Bashar Assad has failed to deliver on promises of reform when he came to power 10 years ago this month. The report comes as Syria tries to emerge from international isolation and improve relations with Arab and Western states. The United States has boosted engagement with Syria in the hopes of drawing the country away from Iran and the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas. Syrian officials were not available for comment Friday and generally do not respond to such criticism. The Syrian leader has slowly moved to lift Soviet-style economic restrictions his father and predecessor, Hafez Assad, left him. He has loosened the reins on banking, sought to attract foreign investment, and encouraged tourism and private education. But he has not matched his liberal economic policies with any political reforms. Human Rights Watch, in a 35-page report called "A Wasted Decade," said Syria's secret police detain people without arrest warrants and torture "with complete impunity." The report also cited widespread censorship and banning of websites such as Facebook. When he first came to power in 2000, Assad allowed political discussion groups to hold small gatherings in a period that came to be known as the "Damascus Spring." But he soon began to clamp down on pro-democracy activists, sending the regime's secret police to raid their meetings. "The period of tolerance that followed Assad's ascent to power was short-lived, and Syria's prisons quickly filled again with political prisoners, journalists, and human rights activists."
Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili says he hopes Belarus would not give its vote for the sovereignty of former Georgian republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. "I believe that Belarus will make a wise move as we [Georgia] received a group of lawmakers from Belarus recently and they considered the issue very deliberately," Saakashvili said in an interview with Belarus television. The Georgian president added that "Russia keeps applying pressure on Belarus concerning the issue of recognizing the independence of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia." South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia recognized their independence after a five-day war with Georgia in August 2008 that began when Georgian forces attacked South Ossetia in an attempt to bring it back under central control. Only Nicaragua, Venezuela and the tiny Pacific island state of Nauru have followed suit. Belarus was expected to do the same but dragged its feet for more than almost two year on the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and experts believe Minsk is afraid that this move would worsen its relations with the European Union.
VII. PRAVMIR - How to Grow Spiritually
The third stage of spiritual growth in the Orthodox Christian spiritual tradition is that of perfect communion with God. For if the message of the gospel is that the Son of God has come into the world in order to overthrow the tyranny of death and restore the human race to its original perfection, such perfection must be understood as being nothing else but a state of unending oneness with God. To believe in Christ thus means, as we have already said, to live out our baptism by first cleansing ourselves from the passions, for it is the passions that give birth to sin, and it is sin that produces death. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.” The first step towards becoming one with God is to drown sin so that the new life in Christ might be manifest in all of its glory and beauty. The old human nature must be put to death so that the new nature, which is the living person of Christ Himself, might be raised up within. In Holy Baptism, we are thus united to Christ, and through the anointing of the Holy Spirit (in Chrismation) we gain the virtues. So, to say that the key to our salvation lies in baptism means to say, simply and directly, that the human person cannot be properly understood apart from his or her relationship to God. This is why the Scriptures testify that from the beginning we as human beings are unique from the rest of creation in that we were created according to the image and likeness of God. And although the likeness has been marred by the effect of sin, the image, according to the holy fathers of the Church, remains indelibly imprinted within each of us. Salvation in the gospel thereby means to realize the divine likeness by sharing in all of God’s goodness. The Holy Fathers of the Church summarize this by saying that “Everything that God is Himself by nature, we must become by grace.” That is, all of God’s divine energies, His love, creative power, wisdom, intellect, understanding, freedom, mercy, kindness, just to name a few, He freely shares with us human beings so that we might become fully deified. Deification is the destiny of every human person. Everything else that human beings “do” must be done in light of this calling, or else all is for nothing. As one Athonite theologian writes, “Since man is “called to be a god” (i.e. was created to become a god), as long as he does not find himself on the path of Theosis he feels an emptiness within himself... he feels that something is not going right, so he is not joyful even when he is trying to cover the emptiness with other activities. He may numb himself, create a glamorous world, or cage and imprison himself within this world, yet at the same time he remains poor, small, limited. He may organize his life in such a way that he is almost never at peace, never alone with himself. Surrounded by noise, tension, television, radio, continuous information about this and that, he may seek to forget with drugs; not to think, not to worry, not to remember that he is on the wrong path and has strayed from his purpose.” This brings us back to the beginning of the faith once again, which is simply to remember that the Son of God became the Son of the Virgin so that we human beings might once again enter into the divine life of the Holy Trinity, so that we might have a share in the communion of love that exists among the three persons of the Holy Trinity for all eternity, a love which itself the truest content of eternal life. “That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they, too, might be in us.” (John 17:21). Let us long for this life and this love above everything earthly and transient, for it is here that we find true peace, happiness and joy. To read part one, click here and to read part two, click here.